Demetrius, taking to heart the course of conduct of the great philosopher, and assured, by the aspect of things, of his speedy disconnection with the interests of Alexandria, sent letters to the bishops, containing bitter recriminations for imposing hands on Origen. He did not stop at this point. He also despatched to the prelates of Asia letters full of invectives and animosity, requiring them to hold no communion with Origen, who had violated the disciplinary canons. The respite that ensued on his return to Alexandria was of short duration. A council was “assembled by the care, and under the presidency, of Demetrius,” for the purpose of examining the legality and validity of Origen’s ordination. In this council we can only discover two things laid to his charge—namely, that he had made himself a eunuch, and had been ordained without the consent of Demetrius, his ordinary. Those charges, if we take into consideration the customs of the times and the imperfections of ecclesiastical discipline during the persecutions, contain in themselves very little upon which a grievous censure of Origen could be founded. In the language of the church, they are irregularities; one _ex defectu_, the other _ex delicto_. Let us for a moment concede that there were such canons in existence at the time of Origen’s ordination, by the violation of which irregularities were incurred, what then follows? In that age of the church, bishops enjoyed great privileges, discretionary powers—far more discretionary than even the bishops of the United States enjoy nowadays in this missionary country—and pre‐eminently so the Patriarch of Alexandria, the Patriarch of Antioch, and the Metropolitan of Palestine, who was Bishop of Cæsarea. These prelates could dispense, in nearly all emergencies, the violators of the ecclesiastical ordinances; other prelates in the East were more or less restricted in their functions, and in matters of moment could do nothing detrimental to those sees. What authority, then, prevented Theoctistus from pronouncing Origen released from the irregularities, and canonically qualified for the reception of orders? Had any other ordinary imposed hands on him except the Metropolitan of Palestine, the objections of the Patriarch of Alexandria would undoubtedly have carried with them more weight. But the Metropolitan of Cæsarea, while respectfully acquiescing in the priority of the See of Alexandria, through reverence of its princely founder, always exercised his own jurisdiction without the permission or consultation of Alexandria. Theoctistus of Cæsarea was not even under Demetrius, but under the Patriarch of Antioch, and these provincial and patriarchal boundaries as well as episcopal relations were only finally authoritatively adjusted by the Council of Nice.(55) In the second place, the Metropolitan of Cæsarea, who always exercised more than ordinary episcopal functions, which were afterwards approved and